Selecting Technology Acquistion Strategy through Applying PROMETHEE Method: An Industrial Automation Equipment Manufacturer

Selecting the proper acquisition strategy for neededtechnologies, is one of the key strategic decisions informulating technology strategy for a company. There are anumber of factors were found to be influential in theselection of technology acquisition strategy. This paperdeals with selecting technology acquisition strategy as amultiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem. Theproposed solution to the problem in this paper is thePROMETHEE method. In this paper, after depictingTechnology Tree for a given product and selecting aStrategic Technology Unit (STU), PROMETHEE methodwas employed for selecting the best strategy for acquiringrequired technology based on several criteria such as: Cost,Time, Learning, Current Capability and Competitiveadvantage. A case of an industrial automation equipmentmanufacturer named Geshm Voltage is presented for theillustration of the our proposed approach. The proposedapproach is expected to effectively help decision making onwhich strategy is adopted for acquisition of requiredtechnologies.

Keywords:

Technology Strategy , Technology Acquisition , PROMETHEE , Industrial Automation Industry , Qeshm Voltage